Affordable DX10 - GeForce 8600 GTS and 8600 GT

mikemuch writes "While ATI still hasn't released a DX-10-capable graphics card, Nvidia today already released its affordable SKUs, in descending price and performance order the GeForce 8600 GTS and GeForce 8600 GT, and 8500 GT. The GTS costs $200-230, the GT from $150-170, and the 8500 reaching down to the $90 range. The architecture for the new GPUs is the same as for the 8800 line, but with lower clocks and fewer stream processors."

too many models and lines

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish there was an easier way to judge the speed of one Nvidia card against another just by looking at the name. I can never tell.

Are these faster than my 7800GS? Would they be faster than a 7800GT? Who can fucking tell?

Re:Yay! DX10!

[Anonymous Coward]

And....no drivers for the only OS that supports it. Everybody wins!

Don't care

[Opportunist]

As long as there is no stable, useful and fast system supporting DX10, there's no point buying a card supporting it.

not objective

[Anonymous Coward]

The Benchmarks say one thing but the actual games (which is why most not all but most people buy these cards) show that the X1950 Pro wins most of the time. What do they actually talk about though at every possible point? How badly the X1650 XT performs.

Please. This is all bull.

Re:Don't care

[drinkypoo]

As long as there is no stable, useful and fast system supporting DX10, there's no point buying a card supporting it.

What if Microsoft held a war... and nobody came?

This is pretty hilarious shit. Obviously no one gives a shit about Vista, or there'd be tons of DX10 hardware with working drivers already. It's clear that no one with lots of money is beating anyone up about this.

It's a *product*, not a SKU

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is with people calling a product a Stock Keeping Unithttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_Keeping_Uni t [wikipedia.org]? It's a physical item, not a freaking number.

So how much did NVidia pay them for this?

[Moryath]

The Radeon X1950 beats the NVidia cards in every single test save for the "synthetic" crapmark test that has nothing to do with reality.

Yet their final page says you should buy the NVidia rather than the X1950?

Somebody's been paid off. This wasn't an article, it's a fucking stealth ad. They have no integrity.

Let me get this straight.

[Glytch]

DirectX 10 only works under Vista.

The biggest reason to get these cards over other existing ones is for DirectX 10.

The drivers for these cards don't work under Vista.

Huh.

old $150 x1950 pro outdoes new $200 8600 gts

[guidryp]

So in short, you pay more and get less performance in hopes that someday, you will need DX10.

It seems nice of Nvidia to leave ATI/AMD a chance to beat them squarely in the $200 bracket by showing up with more memory bandwidth.

8600 is ok but hardly anything to get excited about. More about features than performance or bang/buck.

Re:It's a *product*, not a SKU

[Aladrin]

You apparently haven't worked retail.

Yes, it's a Stock Keeping Unit. When a manager wants to talk about the variety on his shelf, he talks about the number of SKUs on it. Each SKU is a different item in the computer, but may be VERY close to another product in actuality. Yellow Rubberbands vs Red Rubberbands, for instance.

Like it or not, sometimes the real world carries over into our little tech paradise and we have to understand their terms. Even worse, sometimes we start using them ourselves! Oh noes!

Re:Yay! DX10!

[kestasjk]

I stand corrected

Pot & Kettle

[Nom du Keyboard]

While ATI still hasn't released a DX-10-capable graphics card,

And while Nvidia still hasn't released working Vista drivers...

I would Mod the article submitter Troll -1 over the wording in this article.

Re:too many models and lines

[Alastor187]

I think when used correctly price can be a fairly good indicator of performance. Look at the manufacture retail price for different cards. The highest priced cards offer the most performance, likewise the lower priced cards over less performance. In some cases this works between manufactures. NVIDIA and ATI typically offer the same performance for about the same price. They are obviously competing so it is never exact, but I have never seen one severely undercut the other. I guess it makes sense, we want performance so that is what they charge us for.

But the x1950 still isn't DX 10...

[Kamokazi]

Which in most cases for gamers, doesn't usually matter-in most cases, the more powerful hardware is better than weaker hardware with new tech. However, with the way M$ is pushing Vista upgrading, how long will it be before there are less impressive games that require DX10 to run, and potentially DX10 hardware? Or what about DX10 games like Crysis? Maybe that will push performance past non DX10 cards. It's hard to say untill we can test things like that.

Re:ATi ain't far behind

[lattyware]

I must say, I will *allways* buy nVidia until ATI shape up their Linux drivers. Twinview makes dual monitors as easy in Linux as anywhere else, and that is something valuable to me. But still, ATI cards *are* important - hopefully they mean nVidia will drop the price. But until then I am happy with my passive 7600GS.

yay abuse of moderation

[drinkypoo]

Well, I've been letting them go, but this one is too obviously done by some Microsoft fanboy. This is not a troll. I never troll. If I said something, it was either sarcastic and said for effect (and I generally provide plenty of context) or I fucking meant it. Clearly no one is motivated to go to Vista unless Microsoft has made some kind of sleazy deal with them.

Re:Let me get this straight.

[rrhal]

I agree - DX10 is still on the horizon. Once its here (i.e. there are games you can buy that you want to play that use DX10) the graphics cards will be better and cheaper. Maybe the drivers will get fixed by then too.

Re:yay abuse of moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, your post was not a troll. There is no surge of upgrades to Vista, and it seems like it will enter people's homes and businesses when they would get a new computer anyway. The Wow campaign failed, in other words.

Posting anonymously, since posting "I agree"-type replies to posts moderated as Troll will sometimes render the reply with a Troll moderation too, and I don't want to take the karma hit.

Re:too many models and lines

[Anonymous Coward]

be very careful when doing this though, often price and *scarcity* are related as well (i.e, trying to purchase something that has been generally discontinued by the manufacturer). There is often a large price *premium* when you're trying to buy old legacy hardware.

For example, you don't want to be stuck buying a $1004.00 Pentium-D Extreme Edition processor http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?Pr oductCode=80833 [zipzoomfly.com]
  when a $180 Core2 Duo can easily beat the snot out of it.

Re:yay abuse of moderation

[Opportunist]

Not taken as a trolling comment. I have to agree, I noticed the same.

I am in contact with a good portion of the local dealers of computer hard- and software. The general consensus is that people do anything but break down their doors for Vista. If they buy it, it's usually bought with a new computer. Actually the campaign did more ill than good. It made it very "uncool" to go Vista, 'cause such a huge hype has been created around it while the reports are pretty bland. The hefty price tag and not being able to "try" it before buying it (ya know, the "trials" that you get from .torrents) didn't help either.

Generally, there are 4 groups of people who could buy it:

First, the companies. They get whatever their contractor supplies, and they generally get computers with system, not when the system comes out (far from it, they need finished systems not bananaware) but when the life cycle dictates it.

Then the clueless users. They, too, get their system with the hardware. Preinstalled. Because it's simpler, easier and less hassle. I know people who still run 98 because they upgrade every 7 years or so and back then their system came with 98, so why bother buying something else? It "works"...

Then, the wannabe gurus. The people who buy whatever is "hip". Well, Vista could have fit that demographics, but the marketing blew it. Big time. Vista is anything but "hip".

And finally the people with a clue. They'd buy it if it offered any measurable benefit. But it doesn't. Aero is fluff. The added security isn't secure. The promised file system didn't make it. What's left?

There's already a joke circulating how to upgrade to Vista for free:
1. Download a window manager that mimics Aero (optional).
2. Remove half your ram.
3. Clock your CPU down a few notches.

Sadly, it's not that far from reality.

Re:So how much did NVidia pay them for this?

[jahurska]

Notice also that the 8600 GTS is compared against X1950 Pro which is a sub-$200 card currently, lowest price I have seen was $175. And 8600 GT is compared against X1650 XT, which is sub-$150 card. MSRP of 8600 GTS and 8600 GT according to the article is $239 and $199 respectively. Better price wise comparison would be 8600 GTS against X1950XT 256Mb and 8600 GT against X1950 Pro. Also the article does not compare these cards against the NVidia's older generation cards, like 7950GT which is around the same price point than 8600 GTS.

Of course the DX10 technology affects cost, but either way it would be more fair comparison if the cards around the same price point were compared as it would show how much DX9 performance you are sacrificing to have DX10 hardware. As these cards are on the cast of affordable gamer cards, the bang-per-buck performance is what most gamers want to know.

Also comparison against the 8800 GTS card would've been helpful as the 8800 GTS has attained the $300 price point.

Tom's hardware has IMHO better review about these cards. I would suggest that everyone interested about these cards check that review also.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/04/17/geforce_860 0/ [tomshardware.com]